US 230167

I'll run targeted searches for this exact number.

Let me check for any litigation/docket references and confirm the inventor/assignee record.

Search results summary — US Patent 230,167

Searches run: (1) US230167 patent; (2) US230167A oiling-can patent Bard Sabula Iowa 1880; (3) "230,167" patent Bard oiling can assignee; (4) CAFC 2026 docket patent 230167 Federal Circuit appeal. No search returned a live USPTO PatentCenter, USPTO Assignment, or CAFC docket record for this number. The only authoritative full text available to me is the Google Patents copy of the printed patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US230167](/patent/US230167)/en), which reproduces the original specification and drawing sheets. Details below are drawn from that document; where a data field is not present in the document itself, I say so explicitly rather than inferring it.

Bibliographic data

Abstract

There is no abstract. Abstracts were not part of US patent practice in 1880, and none appears in the printed document. The Google Patents "Definitions" field for this record is not an abstract — it is an OCR extraction of the opening paragraphs of the specification (which is why it begins with the mis-scanned title "JhfirBARD Oiliin'g Gan"). The closest thing to a stated object is this sentence from the specification:

"My invention consists of an oiling-can provided with a funnel-shaped cap and a removable spout, the cap being adapted to be readily inverted, to be used as a funnel in filling the vessel, as hereinafter fully described."

(Note: the OCR renders "funnel" once as "tunnel" — "to be used as a tunnel in filling the vessel." That is a scanning artifact, not claim language.)

Plain-language overview of the disclosure

The patent covers a two-piece closure system for a conventional oiling can:

• A — the ordinary oiling-can body.
• B — a funnel-shaped cap that fits neatly over the top of the can. Its central neck (C) has screw threads on its lower portion that screw into the top of the can, and a pin (a) on its upper portion that retains the spout.
• The neck also has an aperture — so that, when the cap is inverted and the neck is pushed down into the can's fill opening, oil that collects in the annular trough around the projecting neck drains back through that aperture into the can. In other words, the inverted cap works as a self-draining funnel.
• G — a removable spout held on the neck by a bayonet-joint slot (F) that receives the lug/pin (c).

Operation (as described): to fill, remove the spout, invert the cap, and insert the neck into the can — the assembly forms a funnel (Fig. 3). When full, replace the cap and spout to restore a complete oiling can (Figs. 1–2).

Independent claims (both claims are independent; the patent has exactly two claims, no dependent claims)

Claim 1 — An oiling-can provided with an invertible funnel-shaped cap, substantially as and for the purpose described.

Plain language: the broadest claim. It covers an oiling can fitted with a funnel-shaped cap that can be flipped over/inverted. No structure is positively recited beyond "oiling-can," "invertible," and "funnel-shaped cap"; the remainder is the boilerplate "substantially as and for the purpose described" sweep-up common to this era. The claim's effective scope therefore depends heavily on the specification and drawings, not on the claim text alone.

Claim 2 — The oiling-can A, provided with the funnel-shaped invertible cap B, having the neck C, and the removable spout G, substantially as and for the purpose described.

Plain language: the narrower, more specific claim. It adds (a) reference-letter identification of the can body A; (b) the cap B as a funnel-shaped, invertible element; (c) the neck C on that cap; and (d) the removable spout G. It is the combination claim for the full assembly.

Both claims are unnumbered-as-to-type and use the 19th-century "substantially as and for the purpose described" format rather than modern structural claiming. Neither claim recites the screw threads, the retaining pin, the drain aperture, or the bayonet-joint slot — those are disclosed in the specification but appear only as part of the "described" disclosure, not as express claim limitations. Whether they limit the claims under modern claim-construction practice is a legal question, not something the document answers.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 dockets

No CAFC or district-court reference to US 230,167 was found, and none should be expected. Two independent reasons:

1. The patent's term ran out July 20, 1897 (17 years from the 1880 grant, per the Google Patents legal-status entry), so it has been unenforceable for over a century.
2. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit was created in 1982 (Federal Courts Improvement Act), i.e., 102 years after this patent issued. A "CAFC 2026 docket" involving this patent is chronologically impossible.

My CAFC-oriented search surfaced unrelated 2026 matters (e.g., Federal Circuit appeal 2026-1670, Harbor Island Dynamic LLC v. Samsung Electronics, a nonprecedential Rule 42(b) dismissal order dated September 15, 2026, arising from IPR2024-01403, and the September 2026 oral-argument calendar). These are docket numbers, not patent numbers, and have no connection to US 230,167. I am flagging the resemblance explicitly so the digit string is not mistaken for a match.

Related-art context (from the same record)

• Cited by (forward citations): US4164795A (Portable urinal, Johnson, 1979) and US11414313B2 (Water purifier, LG Electronics, 2022) — both listed by Google Patents as citing US230167A. These are almost certainly mechanical-classification neighbors of a funnel/spout closure rather than substantive prior art against the original patent.
• Similar documents (contemporaries): US1074697A "Oil-can and funnel," US253146A "Oil-can," US416939A "Oil-can," US248886A "Bottle-filler," US422199A "Combined can holder and filler" — useful context for what a 2026 validity-style or novelty analysis would treat as the field of the invention.

Uncertainty flags

• Assignee: No assignee is named in the document. I found no assignment record. I cannot rule out an unrecorded or subsequently-recorded assignment, but nothing in the authoritative text supports one.
• Inventor name: The signature block OCR is corrupted; the body text clearly reads "JAMES E. BARD." I am relying on the body text and flagging the discrepancy rather than silently correcting the OCR.
• Reference letters: The OCR garbles several letters (cap "B" appears as "I;" or "I5"; "neck 0" is "neck C"; the drain-aperture letter is ambiguous between "I," "b," and "i"). The claim text confirms the neck is C, and the claims confirm the cap is B.
• No live USPTO/CAFC verification: I did not retrieve a PatentCenter, Global Dossier, or assignment-database record directly; the bibliographic data above is taken from the authoritative printed specification as reproduced on Google Patents, which is the strongest source available to me here.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 230167.

Let me search more specifically for this patent and any related case records.

Litigation Search: US Patent 230,167

Bottom line: No litigation is known — and none is realistically possible.

The patent itself

Litigation findings

Searches of patent‑litigation resources and general web sources returned zero case records, complaints, dockets, or judgments naming US 230,167 as an asserted patent:

• No PACER/CAFC/Unified Patents litigation entry. No case list, docket, or complaint record associates this patent number with any plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, or case number.
• No Federal Reporter / older case-law hits. Searches for the patentee ("James E. Bard," "Sabula," oiling-can) produced only unrelated 19th-century lubricator and oil-cup decisions (e.g., Seibert Cylinder Oil-Cup Co. v. Newark Lubricator Mfg. Co., Tucker v. Sargent) — none involving this patent.
• Search noise confirmed as non-matches. Results for "230167" resolved to unrelated records: a Connecticut Supreme Court docket number (PSC-230167), Japanese publication JP 2007-230167 A (Sekisui Chemical), and the "167 patent" in a modern Valjakka v. Netflix-related sanctions matter — an entirely different patent family. I did not treat any of these as matches.

Why no litigation exists

This is a 19th-century utility patent. It was filed in 1880 and its 17-year term expired on July 20, 1897 — over 129 years ago. Any infringement suit would have had to be brought in the narrow 1880–1897 window in the U.S. circuit courts. No such record survives in the indexed sources searched. The patent therefore has no enforceable rights today and cannot be asserted in any current litigation.

One caveat on the forward citations

The Google Patents page lists two "Cited By" references — US 4,164,795 A (Johnson, "Portable urinal," 1979) and US 11,414,313 B2 (LG Electronics, "Water purifier," 2022). These are prior-art citations in later patents, not litigation. They indicate this 1880 patent is cited in the background of unrelated modern applications; they do not create or evidence any lawsuit.

Search limitations (stated explicitly)

I could not query PACER directly, and I did not obtain a live response from the Unified Patents litigation case list (the query returned a step-limit notice rather than data). If you need court-record-grade confirmation that no suit exists — particularly for the 1880–1897 period, which predates modern electronic dockets — a manual check of the relevant historical federal circuit court records (N.D. Iowa / S.D. Iowa, and the Federal Cases reporter) would be the appropriate verification step. Based on everything retrievable, however, the answer is that no litigation involving US Patent 230,167 is known.

PTAB Proceedings — US Patent 230,167 ("Oiling-can," James E. Bard)

Bottom line up front: there are no AIA trial proceedings on this patent, and there cannot be a meaningful one. US 230,167 is an 1880 patent that expired in 1897. The source of record is the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list — and it returns no AIA trial proceedings. Independent web searches (PTAB E2E / PTACTS, Justia, CourtListener-adjacent sources, and general queries combining "230167" / "oiling-can" with IPR, PGR, CBM, and Federal Circuit terms) surfaced no petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no appeal naming this patent. Nothing was found that the ODP ingest may simply have missed.

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Proceedings overview

Total: 0 proceedings — 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied. The patent was granted 1880-07-20, filed 1880-04-17, and reached its anticipated expiration on 1897-07-20 (per the Google Patents bibliographic record); it has been in the public domain for roughly 129 years. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not exist until the Leahy–Smith America Invents Act of 2011, and IPRs did not become available until 2012-09-16 — more than a century after this patent's term ended. There is no defensive posture to build from PTAB history here because the statutory vehicle never had jurisdiction over a live patent term. The correct takeaway for a defendant is not "hardened patent" or "claims canceled" — it is that any demand letter citing US 230,167 is asserting an expired patent.

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No proceedings to report

The structured block is empty; accordingly there are no ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} entries to populate. Per the task constraints, I am not inventing proceeding numbers, panels, grounds, or dispositions to fill the format.

For completeness, the record that does exist on this patent:

• Issuance: US 230,167 A, published 1880-07-20; anticipated expiration 1897-07-20; status "Expired – Lifetime."

• Claims on the face of the document: two claims, quoted verbatim as OCR'd —

  • Claim 1: "An oiling-can provided with an invertible funnel-shaped cap, substantially as and for the purpose described."
  • Claim 2: "The oiling-can A, provided with the funnel-shaped invertible cap B, having the neck 0 [sic — letter 'C'], and the removable spout G, substantially as and for the purpose described."

  Note: this patent has claims 1 and 2 only — there are no claims 3–5. Any assertion or analysis referencing "claims 1–5" of 230,167 misstates the patent. The OCR in the Google Patents "Definitions"/description field renders the reference letters inconsistently (I/B for the cap, (I/0/C for the neck, spent/spout), so quote claim numbering carefully but do not treat those OCR artifacts as claim text.

• Cited-by (post-issuance citations, not PTAB): US 4,164,795 A (Johnson, portable urinal, 1979-08-21) and US 11,414,313 B2 (LG Electronics, water purifier, 2022-08-16). These are prosecution/later-document citations of record — they are not IPR proceedings and I have found no evidence either was a challenge vehicle against 230,167.

• Classification: B65D 25/38, 25/40, 25/48 (nozzles/spouts, separable spouts) — useful only as art-class context, not as trial history.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: neither canceled, sustained, nor tested. No claim of 230,167 has ever been construed by the PTAB or the Federal Circuit in an AIA trial, because no such trial has occurred. There is no narrowing history, no certificate of cancellation or correction, and no surviving-claims list to give a defendant. The patent's entire claim set (claims 1–2) stands as issued — irrelevant to infringement exposure, however, because the term ended in 1897 and the patent is not enforceable for any post-1897 conduct.

Estoppel landscape: § 315(e)(2) estoppel is inapplicable. Estoppel under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) attaches only to a petitioner that obtains a Final Written Decision. With zero proceedings, there is no petitioner, no privy, and no estoppel. Practically this is moot: no defendant needs an IPR-based ground because there is no live patent right to invalidate. Every prior-art ground (including § 102 and § 103 over the very art cited on the face of the 1880 document, such as the "Similar Documents" set — e.g., US 248,886 "Bottle-filler," US 416,939 "Oil-can," US 1,074,697 "Oil-can and funnel") remains nominally "available" only in the sense that nothing has been adjudicated — not that a validity challenge is a viable litigation strategy.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs (no petitioner at all), the patent owner (James E. Bard, Sabula, Iowa) has no PTAB appeal history of which I am aware, and there is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain. The patent appears only as legacy prior art and as a classification-adjacent citation in later documents.

A caution worth stating plainly: the Board has in some instances instituted IPRs on expired patents where a live controversy persists (for example, where the patent is still being litigated for pre-expiration damages and a validity adjudication has ongoing estoppel or collateral value). I do not have high confidence that any such doctrine could ever apply to a patent that expired in 1897; I flag it only because § 315 estoppel questions can theoretically outlive a term. Even on the most generous reading, there is no record of any such proceeding here, and no realistic controversy to anchor one.

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Recommended next steps

• If you have received a demand letter or an infringement assertion citing US 230,167: there is no PTAB history to invoke because there is no viable patent. Point to the bibliographic record — publication 1880-07-20, expiration 1897-07-20 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US230167](/patent/US230167)/en) — and note that damages under 35 U.S.C. § 286 reach back only six years from the filing of a complaint. Any pre-1892 damages theory is time-barred (and, of course, § 271 did not exist in its current form). This is a Rule 11 / § 285 candidate, not an IPR candidate.
• If you were expecting a petition list: the absence is definitive, not a gap. The structured ODP block is the canonical list and it is empty; independent searching confirmed it. PTAB Final Written Decisions are public, and nothing matching this patent number appears in PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) or in CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) under this patent number or the "Oiling-can" title.
• If someone has handed you a chart alleging this patent reads on a modern product: verify they have not confused this 1880 patent with a similarly numbered later patent (for example, references to a "'167 patent" in modern litigation frequently denote unrelated patents — my searches turned up a different '167 patent in a CBM/IPR context involving film-drying claims, which is a distinct patent and has nothing to do with Bard's oiling-can).
• If your goal is defensive art: the 1880 document itself is long-expired prior art; cite it defensively against later patents claiming invertible funnel-caps or bayonet-mounted spouts, not as a target.

Confidence statement: I have high confidence that no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding exists for US 230,167, based on the empty canonical ODP block plus corroborating searches. I was unable to locate any Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent, and I found no source indicating otherwise. I did not locate any PTAB document, panel composition, or institution decision, and I am not inferring any.

I'll start by checking the USPTO assignment resources and Google Patents legal events for this patent.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US Patent 230,167 ("Oiling-can")

Scope note / data-availability caveat (read first): The primary source you specified — USPTO Assignment Center — does not extend back to this patent's era. Per the USPTO's own Assignment Database materials, "This searchable database contains all recorded Patent Assignment information back to August 1980" (USPTO Assignment Database Webinar deck); the Assignment Center help text states the same coverage (USPTO PTACTS document, re: assignmentcenter.uspto.gov). Pre‑May 1, 1957 patent assignment records are held by the National Archives and Records Administration, not by USPTO online systems — 37 CFR 1.12(a)(2), and MPEP 301.01 ("The historical database of assignments is maintained separate and apart from the database of assignments affecting title recorded since 1980") (37 CFR 1.12 via govinfo; MPEP-derived FAQ). A live query of assignmentcenter.uspto.gov for patent number 230167 returned no results in my searches, and Google Patents' legal-events panel for US230167A lists no assignment events of any kind. All statements below are therefore based on the patent document itself, the Google Patents legal-events record, and the coverage rules above — not on Assignment Center records, because none can exist for an 1880 patent.

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Inventors

• Residence at filing: Sabula, Jackson County, Iowa (per the specification's opening: "JAMES E. BARD, of Sabula, in the county of Jackson and State of Iowa").
• Execution of the inventor's declaration: March 1, 1880 ("this iilst [first] day of March, A.D. 1880").
• Witnesses on the instrument: W. H. C. Sugg and J. G. Sugg (OCR: "Sue-o," "J. G. SUGG"). These are witnesses to the inventor's oath — not USPTO assignment correspondents, and I do not treat them as such.
• Unusual-pattern check: Not applicable in the usual sense. The "all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing" heuristic presupposes a corporate assignee and multiple inventors. Here there is one named inventor and no assignee entity of any kind — the patent issued to an individual on its face. There is no evidence of any employer, so no departure-to-fire-sale inference can be drawn either way.

OCR caveat, stated explicitly: the scanned OCR of this 1880 document is poor throughout ("JhfirBARD," "funnel-slmped," "spent" for "spout," "neck 0" for "neck C," "cap I5" for "cap B," "$10,230,167"). My reading of the signature as "James Edwin Bard" is an inference from garbled glyphs, not a verified record; the printed name of record is James E. Bard.

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Original assignee

None. The patent issued to the inventor personally.

• The specification contains no "assignor to…" language, no corporate assignee, and no assignment-recital. Google Patents' bibliographic record for US230167A shows no assignee field, and its legal-events list contains only: application granted (1880‑07‑20), publication of US230167A, anticipated expiration (1897‑07‑20), and status "Expired – Lifetime." There is no "Assigned to" legal event.
• Product embodying the claims: unknown/undeterminable. The patent describes an ordinary oiling-can with a bayonet-mounted removable spout and a funnel-shaped cap that can be inverted and screwed neck-down into the can's top to act as a filling funnel (claim 1 covers the invertible funnel-shaped cap; claim 2 covers the can A with funnel-shaped invertible cap B, neck C, and removable spout G). No commercial embodiment, manufacturer, or brand is named in the patent or surfaced by search. Sabula, Iowa in 1880 was a small Mississippi River town; I found no company, catalog, or trade listing connecting Bard to a manufacturing concern, and I will not speculate one into existence.
• Current status of "original assignee": not applicable — the owner at issuance was a natural person. Nothing indicates any successor was ever recorded; there is no basis to name a current owner. For completeness: any unrecorded 19th-century paper assignment would, if it exists, be evidenced only in the NARA-held pre‑1957 assignment digests/indexes (1837–1923) and would have to be ordered from NARA (Record Group 241, "Digests relating to assignments of patent property rights, 1837–1905, with indexes, 1837–1923") — see NARA RG 241 description.

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Assignment timeline

There are no recorded assignments for US Patent 230,167 in USPTO Assignment Center — none, at any point in its history that USPTO indexes. This is the finding, stated plainly, as your brief contemplates: with no recorded post-issuance assignment, ownership presumptively remained with inventor James E. Bard (and then with his heirs/estate, unrecorded), and the patent has been expired since July 20, 1897.

Why the null result is structural rather than suspicious:

1. Assignment Center's coverage begins August 1980 — 83 years after this patent's term expired. No post-issuance transfer of an 1880 patent could appear there.
2. Pre‑1957 records live at NARA, and NARA holds a document digest/index, not a searchable owner database. I did not retrieve or confirm any NARA entry for this patent, so I cannot assert either that a paper assignment exists or that one does not.
3. There is no assignee, security interest, merger, or change-of-name event on the Google Patents legal-events tab — the channel that would flag a later-recorded transfer for old patents if one had been digitized.

The instructions for this section say to stop here if Assignment Center has no records. I am continuing into the required diagram, signals, and verdict sections because your output template explicitly provides for this outcome ("Insufficient data (no records, or only the original assignment)"). Those remaining sections are therefore short and are framed as absence-of-evidence findings rather than reconstructions.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 230167
    1880 : Filed by James E Bard sole inventor
         : Patent granted to Bard personally
    1897 : Patent term expired
         : No recorded assignments ever
    1980 : USPTO online assignment coverage begins
         : No entries for this patent

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Every signal is answered against a chain that contains zero recorded links. Absence of a signal here is not an endorsement of clean provenance — there is simply nothing to test.

One index artifact worth flagging so it is not mistaken for an ownership split: Google Patents lists both US230167A and US230167D, with "Family Applications (1)" confirming a single application. The "D" record is almost certainly an OCR/kind-code index artifact of this document, not a separate design patent or a second property in the family; US230167D likewise shows only "Expired – Lifetime" and no assignment activity. Do not treat it as a second asset in the chain.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — but note this is structural insufficiency, not a gap in my searching.

There are no reel/frame entries to cite because no assignment involving US 230,167 is recorded in USPTO Assignment Center, which by its own published coverage begins in August 1980 — 83 years after this patent's term expired on 1897‑07‑20. The patent issued on its face to James E. Bard of Sabula, Iowa, personally, with no assignee, no corporate employer, and no "Assigned to" legal event on Google Patents, so there is no operating company to assess, no predecessor to a fire-sale, and no shell-entity link to evaluate. The absence of NPE signals here carries no probative weight either way; the only avenue that could ever produce a chain for this patent is a manual pull of the NARA pre‑1957 assignment digests/indexes (RG 241) for a possible 19th-century paper assignment, which I did not perform.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent-number search on 230167 will return zero records; that null result is the finding). Legacy URL https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html mirrors the same data but is being retired — per the USPTO notice, as of February 2, 2026 all older URLs (assignments.uspto.gov, assignment.uspto.gov) will no longer be available.

I'll ground this in the record. Let me pull the USPTO/patent records for the exact number and for the candidate prior-art references.

Now let me check the USPTO record itself and whether this patent carries any of-record citations at all.

I hit the research-step ceiling while gathering the last of the reference texts, so the following is complete as to the record check and the citation analysis, with the source limitations stated explicitly at the end.

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Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent 230,167 ("Oiling-Can")

1. Exact-number identification (USPTO record)

The number was queried literally as 230167. One record matches; no similar numbers were substituted.

Two cautions on the record's own metadata, flagged rather than auto-corrected:

• The page displays "Prior art date 1880-07-20." That is the publication date, not a true prior-art date. The operative critical date for anything filed against this patent is the filing date of April 17, 1880 (or the inventor's earlier date of invention), which controls under the 1870 Act / R.S. §4886.
• The attestation clause OCRs as "on this iilst day of March, A. A, D. 1650." This is scanner noise for "this 11th day of March, A.D. 1880." It does not alter the April 17, 1880 filing date.

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2. Direct answer to the request: this patent has no of-record patent citations

US 230,167 carries zero backward citations. There is nothing in the "patent citations" field of its record to analyze.

The Google Patents record for this document contains exactly two reference blocks, and neither is a citation by this patent:

1. Cited By (2) — forward citations. Later patents that cite US 230,167.
2. Similar Documents (25) — an algorithmic similarity list, explicitly not a citation list. These documents were not cited by the applicant, the examiner, or anyone else in connection with US 230,167.

This is the expected result, not a data gap. US 230,167 was granted in 1880. The practice of printing an examiner/applicant "References Cited" block on the face of a U.S. patent did not exist at that time, and 1880-era patents — which were printed as a specification, a drawing sheet, and claims with no front page — carry no citation data at all. There is therefore no prosecution-history record of cited references to review for this patent, because no such record was ever created.

This directly contradicts the premise of the task as phrased ("Look at each patent citation for 230167... which claim(s) it potentially anticipates"). Nothing in the citation record of US 230,167 can anticipate its claims, because the only citations on the record postdate the patent by decades. I treat this as a substantive finding, not a search failure.

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3. Analysis of the two references that are on the record (forward citations)

These are listed here in full as requested, with the express finding that neither can be § 102 prior art to US 230,167.

Reference A — US 4,164,795 A

Description: A portable urinal — a handheld receptacle for human waste. Unrelated field, no funnel-cap-on-can structure.

§ 102 analysis: Cannot anticipate any claim. It was filed July 28, 1978 and published August 21, 1979 — 98 years after US 230,167 issued. A reference that postdates the patent it is asserted against is categorically incapable of being § 102 prior art. Its only relevance is evidentiary: it shows the 1880 patent is still being cited as background art in modern mechanical-receptacle filings.

Reference B — US 11,414,313 B2

Description: A modern domestic water-purifier appliance. No structural overlap with a funnel-capped oil can.

§ 102 analysis: Cannot anticipate any claim. Filed 2016, granted 2022 — 136 years after US 230,167. Same categorical bar as Reference A.

Net effect of the citation record: the two forward citations confirm the 1880 patent's continued use as background art but supply zero § 102 anticipating references. Any anticipation case against claims 1 and 2 must be built from independently searched pre-April-17-1880 art, which is what I attempted next.

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4. The "Similar Documents" set — screened by date, not treated as citations

I screened all 25 documents in the similarity list against the April 17, 1880 filing date. Twenty-two of them postdate the patent and are therefore incapable of anticipation. Only three have publication dates before the critical date, and are the sole members of that list that could even theoretically be § 102 art:

Representative examples of the post-dating majority, listed to show why they are excluded and to avoid their being mistaken for prior art: US 253,146 A "Oil-can" (1882-01-31); US 416,939 A "Oil-can" (1889-12-10); US 422,199 A "Combined can holder and filler" (1890-02-25); US 1,074,697 A "Oil-can and funnel" (1913-10-07); US 1,325,284 A "Closure-cap" (1919-12-16); US 665,221 A "Stopper" (1901-01-01); US 945,589 A "Jar-holder" (1910-01-04).

Finding: the similarity list is dominated by documents that postdate US 230,167, including the two "Oil-can and funnel"/"Oil-can" references (1889, 1913) that one would most want. The strongest thematic analogues to this invention are all later art, which is itself a meaningful signal about this patent's priority position — the invertible-funnel-cap oiling can appears to have been early in its line, with the closer structural analogues arriving 9 to 33 years afterward.

I must be explicit: I did not retrieve and read the full texts of US 99,050, US 199,165, or US 212,863. I will not characterize their disclosures beyond their titles. Title-level evidence suggests at best marginal relevance for § 102 purposes (a dental instrument, a bottle-stopper fastener, and a cork extractor do not on their face disclose an "invertible funnel-shaped cap" on an oiling can), but a definitive negative requires full-text review, which the step limit prevented.

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5. Independently searched prior art (my own landscape search)

Because the of-record citation field is empty, I searched the surrounding art directly. Findings, with dates screened against April 17, 1880:

Bottom line of the independent search: I found one pre-1880 reference with any structural overlap (US 17,810, 1857), and it does not meet the distinctive limitation of either claim. Every other on-point reference I surfaced postdates the Bard filing — several by only three to four months (US 233,005, US 231,405), which is itself notable: Bard was working at the leading edge of a busy contemporaneous field.

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6. § 102 element analysis

6.1 The statutory framing

The task frames anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102. For an 1880 patent that statute is anachronistic: § 102 was created by the Patent Act of 1952. The anticipation provision in force when US 230,167 was examined was R.S. § 4886 (derived from § 24 of the Act of July 8, 1870), which barred a patent where the invention "was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country, before his invention or discovery thereof, or more than two years prior to his application." Proof of prior patents and publications was governed by R.S. § 4920 (repealed 1946).

The substantive analysis is the same as modern § 102 anticipation — a single reference disclosing every claimed element, arranged as claimed — so I apply the modern § 102 framework to the 1880 claim language, while noting the correct historical provision.

6.2 Claim limitations to be met

6.3 Application to the cited references

6.4 Conclusion on anticipation

No reference identified in this analysis anticipates either claim of US 230,167 under § 102 (or under its 1880 counterpart, R.S. § 4886). Specifically:

• As to claims 1 and 2: the only two references actually on the patent's citation record — US 4,164,795 A and US 11,414,313 B2 — postdate the patent and are categorically disqualified. No anticipation.
• As to claim 1: the closest pre-1880 reference found, US 17,810 (1857), lacks the sole structural limitation (funnel-shaped and invertible cap). No anticipation.
• As to claim 2: US 17,810 additionally lacks the funnel-shaped cap B, the neck C, and the oil-drain aperture. No anticipation.
• The three date-qualified entries from the similarity list (US 99,050, US 199,165, US 212,863) were not read in full; on their titles they do not appear to disclose the claimed subject matter, but I flag this as an unresolved verification item rather than a conclusion.

The practical significance of the near-miss contemporaneous art is worth stating: US 233,005 and US 231,405 were filed within four months of Bard's April 17, 1880 filing and address the same leakage and dispensing problems. Had any of them been filed a few months earlier, they would have been serious § 102 candidates. Bard's claims survive on the strength of the invertible funnel-cap feature, which none of the surrounding art shows. Whether that feature would have survived an obviousness attack is a separate question — and one that cannot be reached under § 103 here, because § 103 did not exist until 1952 (the 1880 statute required invention to be "not known or used," which functioned differently from modern § 103).

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7. Search limitations (stated explicitly so you can calibrate confidence)

1. No direct USPTO Patent Public Search / Patent Center full-document pull. I queried the exact number 230167 and reviewed the mirrored record at patents.google.com; I did not complete an independent pull of the USPTO Patent Center or Patent Full-Text image set for this document. The Google Patents text is a faithful transcription of the printed 1880 patent, but for court-grade work the official copy should be pulled directly.
2. No of-record citations exist to verify against. The finding that the citation field is empty is a positive result of the record review, but note that pre-1880 prosecution files contain no citation data in any database — so "zero citations" cannot be corroborated by a second independent source, only by the absence of a field in the record.
3. Three date-qualified references were not read in full (US 99,050; US 199,165; US 212,863). Their inclusion in § 102 analysis rests on publication date only.
4. The pre-1880 prior-art landscape cannot be exhaustively searched by keyword alone. A definitive § 102 clearance for an 1880 patent would require a class/subclass search of the 1880-era classification schedules (equivalent to modern B65D 25/38, 25/40, 25/48 — the classes assigned to US 230,167) and a full-text sweep of 1850–1880 "oil-can," "funnel," and "can-top" patents, which I could not complete within the available steps.
5. OCR ambiguity in the specification's reference letters. The transcription renders the cap variously as "I"/"B", the neck as "(I"/"0"/"C", and the neck aperture as "(I"/"d". The claim text uses B, C, and G, and the element analysis above follows the claim lettering. The aperture (the drain-back feature central to the Fig. 3 funnel mode) is OCR-garbled in the specification and I have referred to it functionally rather than by letter.

I'll ground this analysis by checking the actual content and dates of the "Similar Documents" listed in the record's prior-art section, since their timing relative to the 1880 invention is dispositive under § 102/§ 103.

Now let me check the specific oil-can/funnel references in the prior-art section, and confirm the statutory framework question.

Let me check a few more pre-1880 references and the remaining "similar documents" dates.

Obviousness Analysis — US Patent 230,167 ("Oiling-can," James E. Bard, granted July 20, 1880)

Search limitation up front: I hit the tool step-limit partway through verifying the prior-art set. Everything below is grounded in (a) the authoritative full text at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US230167](/patent/US230167)/en, (b) the "Similar Documents"/"Cited By" tables on that page, and (c) the specific reference texts and case law I did retrieve. Where I could not verify a reference, I say so rather than fill the gap.

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I. Threshold problem: § 103 did not exist when this patent issued

Before any Graham/KSR analysis, three gating points must be stated.

1. § 103 is temporally inapplicable to US 230,167 as a matter of positive law. Section 103 was enacted by the Patent Act of July 19, 1952 (66 Stat. 798) and took effect January 1, 1953. General Motors Corp. v. Estate Stove Co., 203 F.2d 912, holds squarely: "The newly enacted Patent Codification Act did not go into effect until Jan. 1, 1953, and has no application to the present case." (https://app.midpage.ai/document/general-motors-corp-v-estate-[231594](/patent/231594)). US 230,167 issued in 1880 and expired July 20, 1897 — 56 years before § 103 became law and 85 years before the Federal Circuit existed. The controlling pre-1952 test was the judicially developed "requirement of invention" (Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 1850), which § 103 replaced. The prior sections of this analysis already flagged the CAFC anachronism; the § 103 anachronism is the same defect in a different statute.

2. The analysis below is therefore retrospective and hypothetical — an exercise in applying modern doctrine to a dead patent, not a live validity challenge.

3. Under pre-AIA § 103, prior art is defined by § 102, keyed to the date of invention (~March 1880 per the executed oath, filed April 17, 1880). This has a hard consequence: most of the record's "Similar Documents" are legally unavailable as prior art, because they post-date the invention:

They are same-class neighbors only. A § 103 rejection cannot rest on them.

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II. The PHOSITA, and the claim-construction problem

PHOSITA (1880): a sheet-metal/tinware mechanic in the oil-can and lamp trade — the trade reflected in the record's own index keywords (neck, oiling, cap, funnel, spout) and class B65D 25/38–25/48. This is an artisan working exclusively in stamped/soldered tin, for whom screw-threaded caps, side spouts, and vent tubes were standard stock-in-trade.

Claim scope — the decisive variable. As the prior section established, both claims end in the 19th-century phrase "substantially as and for the purpose described." In 1880 practice, that sweep-up was construed to import the described structure and mode of operation, not to claim a result at large. Where a claim attempted to reach a function or mode of operation as such, courts struck it down as overbroad — Matthews v. Shoenberger, 4 F. 635 (Blatchford, J.): "The first claim is not a claim to any mechanism; but, if not a claim to a function, is a claim to a mode of operation… As a claim thus broad it cannot be sustained." (https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F/0004/0004.f.0635.pdf).

So the claims cut two ways: read broadly (functionally), claim 1 is trivially obvious and arguably invalid as a claim to a mere mode of operation; read narrowly (limited to the disclosed screw-threaded neck + drain aperture + bayonet-retained spout), claim 2 becomes a specific mechanical combination. Note also that none of the structural details — the screw threads, pin a, aperture I, or bayonet slot F — are recited as claim limitations. They exist only in the "described" disclosure.

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III. Element-by-element analysis

The best pre-1880 reference I actually verified: US 64,430 (McIntire)

Retrieved at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/06/49/0f/6ee78ead4679bd/US64436.pdf. Note the identifier discrepancy: the file is named "US64436.pdf," but the document text recites "Letters Patent No. 64,430, dated May 7, 1867" and "Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 64,430." I am reporting both literally rather than harmonizing them.

McIntire, "Improvement in Oil-Cans," John S. McIntire, Chicago, May 7, 1867, discloses:

• "the top of any ordinary oil or fluid-can with a funnel or funnel-shaped opening, O, at the top";
• "providing such funnel with a spout, D, so as to bring the spout above the neck of the can";
• "close both the can and the spout by a single cork or stopper";
• a ventilating tube, F, "for the purpose of passing air out when filling the can and passing it in when using the can… as is frequently the case with a loosely attached funnel";
• claims: (1) "The narrow neck B, arranged relatively to the can A and side spout D"; (2) "The arrangement and combination of the narrow neck B, the funnel C, side spout D, and vent-tube F, with the can A."

This is an oiling-can with a funnel-shaped top, a neck, and a spout — thirteen years before Bard.

Second reference: US 89,299 (Fenn), "Improvement in Oil-Cans," April 27, 1869, at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/54/00/fd/deeb15c80b0efe/US89299.pdf — discloses "A [a] can of ordinary construction, having a screw-top, or cover, B, such as is employed in common oil-cans." This is express evidence that the screw-threaded oil-can cap was old and common.

Third reference: US 212,494 (Paddock), "Improvement in Bottle-Fillers," Feb. 18, 1879, at http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/33/22/9b/1aa515c9f33569/[US212494](/patent/US212494).pdf — a funnel with nozzle discharge, and a receiver "made deeper than the main portion to receive the surplus liquid, which is conveyed away in the pipe a." Pertinent to the drainage concept, though in a different vessel context.

Claim charts

Claim 1 — "An oiling-can provided with an invertible funnel-shaped cap"

Claim 1's delta over a reference it does not even cite is one word: "invertible." That is the kind of difference § 103 was designed to reach — a "mere change of form" or "simple substitution of one known element for another."

Claim 2 — "The oiling-can A, provided with the funnel-shaped invertible cap B, having the neck C, and the removable spout G"

Critical admission: the Bard specification states "A represents an ordinary oiling-can" and "the lower part of [the neck] is provided with screw-threads to screw into the top of the can." The can body and the threaded engagement are thus applicant-admitted prior art, corroborated by Fenn. Claim 2 reduces to: mount the McIntire funnel as an invertible, screw-in cap rather than a fixed one, and make the spout detachable.

Which "similar documents" are noise

US 99050A is the clearest case of classification noise. I verified the full text: it is "Improved instrument for plugging teeth," Marcus L. Battle, Jan. 25, 1870 — a three-bladed steel dental instrument for packing amalgam (https://patents.google.com/patent/US99050A/en). It shares no structure or function with an oiling-can. Its presence in the table reflects a classification artifact, not analogy.

Caveat on US 199165A: my verification attempt returned US 2259247A (Dornier, propeller blade, 1941), in which "US199165A" appears as an application serial number — not a patent number. I could not confirm the 1878 bottle-stopper reference listed in the record's table. I am flagging this rather than assuming the table is correct.

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IV. The combinations, and the motivation to combine

Combination A — Claim 1: US 64,430 (McIntire) in view of the ordinary skill of the tinware art

Rationale (KSR, Graham factor 2): the sole difference is a predictable mechanical variation. McIntire already teaches that a funnel belongs at the top of an oil-can so the same vessel can be filled and used. Making that funnel-shaped top a detachable, invertible cap is the substitution of a known element (a removable lid) for another (a soldered-on funnel) to obtain a predictable result — with the additional, immediately apparent benefit of a lid that cannot be lost and that serves two functions with one part.

Motivation, in the primary reference's own words: McIntire states the problem he is solving — "to facilitate filling the cans, and to prevent the escape of any part of the fluid or oil by the action of the air in passing out, as is frequently the case with a loosely attached funnel." That is an express recognition of the loose- and separate-funnel problem, i.e., exactly the problem an integrated invertible funnel-cap solves. The design incentive is stated in the art, not supplied by hindsight.

Combination B — Claim 2: US 64,430 (McIntire) + US 89,299 (Fenn) + common knowledge of bayonet/detachable fittings

• McIntire supplies the can + funnel-top + neck + spout + filling problem.
• Fenn supplies the screw-threaded can closure ("such as is employed in common oil-cans") — the exact engagement Bard's claim 2 uses, which Bard himself calls "ordinary."
• Common knowledge supplies the detachability of the spout.

Motivation: functional interdependence. In Bard's own assembly, the spout must be removed before the cap can be inverted, and the cap must be threaded into the can to serve as a funnel. The elements are not a mere aggregation — they cooperate. KSR rationale: where a known technique (threaded cap; detachable spout) is applied to a known device (McIntire's funnel-topped can) to yield no more than the expected result, the combination is obvious.

Note that the drain aperture is unclaimed. Bard's genuinely inventive-seeming feature — the aperture that lets oil pooled in the annular trough around the projecting neck drain back into the can (Fig. 3) — is disclosed but not recited in either claim. Because it is unclaimed, it cannot save the claims from obviousness. The claims take the combination and the benefit, but not the element that makes the benefit work.

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V. The best non-obviousness arguments (and why they are weak)

1. Teaching away. McIntire attaches the funnel "firmly, in order to facilitate filling the cans" and disparages the "loosely attached funnel." A patentee would argue this teaches away from a detachable cap. Weak: Bard's cap is not "loose" — it is screwed in, i.e., firmly attached, achieving McIntire's own stated objective. McIntire teaches away from looseness, not from invertibility.

2. Separate invention / different problem. Every reference in the verified set addresses a different vessel problem (McIntire: air escape during filling; Fenn: kerosene evaporation). Weak: the field is the same, the artisan is the same, and the predesignated problem (filling an oil-can cleanly without a separate funnel) is the one McIntire expressly names.

3. Combination-patent doctrine actually ran the other way in 1880. This is the most substantive point and it cuts against the invalidity theory, not for it. Nineteenth-century courts held a combination claim anticipated "only [by] a prior device having identically the same elements, or their mechanical equivalents, co-operating to produce the same results" (Imperial Bottle Cap & Mach. Co. v. Crown Cork & Seal Co., https://storage.courtlistener.com/harvard_pdf/[8774630](/patent/8774630).pdf), and that scattered elements in separate old devices "should not defeat a patent for the combination" (Putnam v. Hickey, 20 F.Cas. 77, https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F.Cas/0020.f.cas/0020.f.cas.0077.4.pdf). A modern A+B § 103 attack on claim 2 is therefore a historically stronger attack than the 1880 law would have permitted. Under the law actually in force, the likelier invalidity ground against claim 1 was overbreadth as a claim to a mode of operation (Matthews v. Shoenberger), or "mere aggregation" — not obviousness.

4. Secondary considerations: no record evidence. Long-felt need is arguable (a 13-year gap between McIntire, 1867, and Bard, 1880), but as the prior sections found, there is no commercial-success, licensing, copying, or industry-praise evidence in this record, and the patent expired unenforced in 1897. Under Graham v. John Deere (383 U.S. 1 (1966)), objective indicia must be proven; none is here. The 13-year gap is at least as consistent with the feature being unimportant as with a long-felt want.

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VI. Bottom line

The largest gaps in the record, stated plainly: (1) I found no pre-1880 reference teaching a bayonet-joint spout retention — the only feature of the Bard assembly with no analogue I located — but since the bayonet slot is not claimed, that gap does not affect the claim charts; (2) I could not verify US 199165A or any of US 385256A, US 419871A, US 418940A, US 1032917A, US 558543A, US 1290859A, US 851688A, US 417690A, US 459916A, US 433090A, US 361909A, US 409476A, US 325970A, US 945589A, US 1325284A, US 1141378A, or US 665221A; and (3) the single most useful reference, McIntire, carries a file-name/patent-number discrepancy (US64436.pdf vs. "No. 64,430") that I have reported rather than silently corrected. A text search of the 1867–1880 oil-can class would likely surface a closer anticipatory or near-anticipatory reference; the record as furnished does not contain one.